For Liszt, read Jimi Hendrix … for Wagner, Kanye West? Canadian MC and songwriter Chilly Gonzales – who learned his craft through classical piano – reflects on the crossover between the pop and orchestral worlds

In April and May 2015, the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa will give her next two Jamie’s Concerts in the UK. Jamie’s Concerts form an ongoing series that started in 2004, designed specifically for parents and carers of children with autism.

Universal Music Group India (UMGI) is to team up with Indian creative networking, design and production studio Qyuki on an ambitious social improvement project in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum area located in Mumbai.

The Metropolitan Opera said on Wednesday that it would redouble its efforts to attract new audiences to the opera next season with six new productions, a star-filled roster and new initiatives, including one that will offer half-priced tickets to children during the holidays and another to court young professionals with later curtain times, discounts and social events.

When Deborah Rutter took over as the Kennedy Center’s president in September, music lovers wondered what would happen with the National Symphony Orchestra — one of the most highly paid ensembles in the country, but a chronically underperforming organization.

Kenneth G. Pigott was that rarity among leaders of cultural institutions: a visionary board president who could speak knowledgeably about the art form he served and who took an active, influential role in moving the institution forward.

In light of the nation’s newfound friendship with Cuba, the Minnesota Orchestra announced Thursday that it would travel to Havana to play two concerts in May. This would be the first major American orchestra to play there since President Obama normalized relations with the estranged nation.

The frontcloth to ENO’s new production of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg features a collage of 103 of the most famous cultural figures from the German-speaking world. How many can you name? And no, Wagner himself is not there.

Rufus Wainwright has his opera hat on. He’s at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios (where he films this exclusive video for The Times) for ten intense days with the BBC Symphony Orchestra recording Prima Donna, his first opera.

The inventive Polish director Mariusz Trelinski, whose eerie, film noir-influenced double bill of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” and Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” at the Metropolitan Opera is winning praise, has received an even bigger assignment form the company: a new production of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” that will open the Met’s season in 2016.

The Berlin Philharmonic’s chief conductor and Finnish music journalist/Sibelius expert Vesa Sirén spend an hour talking about the composer’s music – and what the Philharmoniker find easy and difficult about it.

According to the latest survey compiled by the German Orchestra Association, the 2013–14 orchestral season encompassed 4,160 concerts for children and young people – 94 per cent more than in the same period ten years ago.

We spoke exclusively to hotshot Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel ahead of the release of his new Wagner recording with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, and he found time to answer some of your questions too.

Boutique classical and contemporary music marketing agency WildKat PR has announced the launch of The Noted Innovation Fellowship, a scheme that will introduce industry newcomers to leading arts mangers in order to progress their careers.

PARIS — The new concert hall here, the Philharmonie de Paris, rises like a flight of doves, its sprawling waves of concrete and steel designed by the star architect Jean Nouvel to symbolize the end of the “eternal ostracism” of the struggling neighborhoods nearby.

Every year the Vienna Philharmonic greets the new year with its annual celebration of the music of the Strauss family. And every year, the orchestra lets its collective hair down with one of the more bizarre pieces in the Viennese canon. Here are some of our favourites…

One of the first measures Peter Gelb instituted when he arrived as general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006 was to introduce a rush ticket program, which offers up to 100 or so $25 tickets in prime seating locations for each performance.